The Cement Garden – Ian McEwan

I remember the old times, when reading McEwan (to me) meant reading stories of privileged beautiful people and how they would be able to overcome whatever obstacle they encountered and return to their posh lives before the end of the novel.  As Bob Dylan used to sing, however, The Times They’re a-Changin’

The Cement Garden is an absolutely great read. And weird. And disturbing. I wouldn’t even know how to classify it: it’s not a horror novel, or at least I don’t think so, yet it does give you goose bumps in so many ways. Its effect on me was similar to that of Doris Lessing’s The Fifth Child or Beryl Bainbridge’s Harriet Said... And much like those books, it’s not something that I would particularly encourage my pregnant wife to read.

And yes, my wife is pregnant. And this is also kind of a test to see how many (if any) of my real-life friends actually read this little blog…

Gods Without Men – Hari Kunzru

The great thing about young writers is that you can be all smug and unreasonably proud for reading their complete works, or at least all their fiction books (as it’s the case for me and Kunrzu). Let’s just ignore the fact that at the end of the day Kunzru has only written four novels so far.

To me, nothing will ever equal the impact and the depth of My Revolutions, but Gods Without Men was a lot more enjoyable than The Impressionist (I liked it pretty much as much as I liked Transmissions, with the sentimental sections in this case replaced by wacky but entertaining mystic ones). The book has been compared to works by David Mitchell and Kurt Vonnegut, but I actually saw quite a lot of Philip Roth (American Pastoral) and Don DeLillo (White Noise).

As usual, Kunzru writes beautifully, and succeeds in making the story of Jaz and Lisa gripping and touching (In particular when he describes their lives in the public eye). However, I have the feeling that some of the characters are slightly too stereotyped (in particular the nerdy Jaz and the British Nicky, who just uses a few British idioms too many to be fully credible). 

The mysteries of the afterlife don’t interest me. Kunzru’s recounting of them, however, does. 

Group Portrait with Lady - Heinrich Böll

One of those books that I literally couldn’t put down (well, if you ask my wife, that’s about any book, except for the remarkably bad ones that I am forced to read for my office’s book club – this month was the turn of The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul, the most offensively patronizing piece of poo poo I’ve ever read, seriously!).

Back on topic. The novel is clearly, yet again, about WWII and Nazifascism (amongst other things). Its approach (a literary mockumentary?) remains hilarious and alternative more than forty years after the book’s publication. In the novel Böll manages to write, always with a hint of irony, some of the most touching pages I’ve ever read (in particular the coffee scene and the singing by Boris, the Soviet POW and real love of Leni’s life) and simultaneously throw in some remarkably humorous comments (at a certain point the author’s research was delayed by his watching the Clay-Frazier fight…).

And the idea that the entire book revolves not just around a normal person, but around one who says so little about herself that it can be contained in one quick page in the middle of the book, is, in my humble opinion, an absolute stroke of genius. Well, that’s actually not just my humble opinion probably; Böll did receive the Nobel Prize after Group Portrait with Lady after all…

The Paper Men – William Golding

I thought that Golding had essentially only written The Lord of the Flies. Turns out I was wrong (and, as a matter of fact, I ended up enjoying The Paper Men a lot more than his supposed masterpiece).

At times the novel is almost an early and less polished version of Barney’s Version (apologies for the multiple “versions” there) – the same kind of rant given by a very interesting man clearly not in full control of his mind. Being old, rude, and blunt the narrator also doesn’t have an idyllic view of Italy, something that, needless to say, feels like a welcome departure from the delightful picture painted by so many writers since, well, since forever…

The figure of Rick Tucker is so very sad to me. I’m not quite sure whether my mental picture of him is even more miserable than the one most readers must have because of my own struggles with(in) the academic world. But, hey, at least I’m really glad that he ends the story the way he does…

One thing, though, remains ultimately unclear to me: why would anyone care that much about the biography of a writer? I mean, it’s not like writers are important figures in today’s world, or that a book like that is likely to sell. If I was as rich as Tucker’s “benefactor”, I would just buy the author and force him to tell me the story of his life rather than hiring someone else to do try to do that for me…

The Page Turner – David Leavitt

The random books one ends up reading when one (or one’s wife) picks up a large pile of novels primarily because they are free. My parents had been talking for years about While England Sleeps, so I figured I should give Leavitt a try.

It was an enjoyable and remarkably light read. The one issue, though, is that I really didn’t find much in the book that I could relate to: as an Italian expat with very little intention of ever going back to the country I didn’t really find anything too magic in the – rather standard – poetic and idyllic descriptions of Rome; as the stereotypical manly heterosexual man, I found little interest in the heady journey of sexual discovery of the main character; and as a spoiled only child who always got along rather well with his mother, I had very little interest in the relatively problematic relationship between the titular Page Turner and his mom.

So yeah, a good book to read on a Sunday afternoon while one is trying not to think of the state of his legs after running 18 miles (damn marathon training…), but that’s about it for me…